Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Artist A Day

Today, I was very happy to be featured on Artist A Day. It's an awesome site that features all kinds of artists every weekday and allows people to comment and vote on the work. I mostly got a lot of good feedback and I hope everyone knows how much I appreciate the kind words. I was especially thankful to get a very thoughtful and inspiring email from Kim Huyett who saw my work on the site.

There were a couple comments where people questioned whether or not I could paint faces. I can't really blame them...the two images posted on the site were both paintings with hair blowing over and pretty much covering the faces of the girls in the foreground.

I guess it's always been a weird thing for me to have a face on a painting that I do for gallery work. It's not that I don't like painting faces. I love it. You can see, that in most of my studies, I will usually choose to paint ONLY a face. But when I paint pictures for a show, I'm always trying to kind of discover myself in my work. I use a lot of masks and at times hair to try and tell my own story and show how I haven't quite figured out who I am. Also, I want people to be able to relate to a painting. I guess I want people to be able to see themselves in the world I'm trying to create as well. So I suppose these faceless people can be anyone.

But, I am trying to move away from that a little bit. You will definitely see less covering up in the future.

Alright...I need to get back to painting for this black and white show. I hope you all can make it out this weekend. I saw Ken and Tom's work already and it's all really amazing. I seriously loved every piece they had. I'm really excited to see what the other guys came up with.